Out of the Wild
by 2TreeHuggers
Summary: AU: What if the stargate didn't exist at all & the Atlantis team met not at Cheyenne mountain, but in Cambodia to research & rescue endangered animals. How would the events play out & how would the bonds be formed? Cowritten between Anjirika&Anuna. R&R!
1. First Steps

**Out of the Wild**

**By: Anjirika and Anuna**** (2TreeHuggers)**

**1. First Steps**

The university campus was bustling with activity. Students were walking from class to class or spread out on the lawns doing the last minute cramming. It was the last week before final exams and there was a palatable buzz in the air.

For the first year students, their first excursion into university was almost over and for the graduating students, another phase of their lives was coming to a close - for the rest, it was just the same old; a time to buckle down and get through the remaining classes before taking a much needed break before coming back the following year.

The professors on the other hand were excited for the term to end as well. But there was probably no one excited as Doctor Elizabeth Weir was on that day. As she walked from her second - last class of the day to her office she was celebrating inside. No more classrooms for a whole semester or even more. Today was the day that she would be meeting the members of her new team. Her _field research_ team. It was every biologist's dream come true, and Elizabeth considered self lucky.

She had just gotten offered the leading position on a new expedition by GARA; the Global Animal Research and Rescue Association to do some research on the jaguars in small region of South America.

"Dr. Weir?" Asked a tentative voice and Elizabeth looked up to see the face of her assistant Peter Grodin, a former transfer student from South Africa peaking around her doorframe.

"Yes what is it Peter?" Elizabeth asked brightly.

"Dr. Simon Wallace on line one for you..." Peter stated tentatively. Oh that's why he didn't make a sound when I came in, thought Elizabeth, wondering how many calls from her fiancée she missed. "...he says it's urgent, something about South America?" added Peter, his eyes pleading to get lost as soon as possible.

"Yes," Elizabeth sighed, picking up the receiver of the phone. Closing her eyes she reminded herself to keep her calm, knowing exactly what this conversation would be like. "Thank you Peter..." Once her assistant was safely out of ear-shot Elizabeth clicked line one and was greeted immediately by Simon's voice.

"What's the meaning of this Elizabeth?" he demanded, badly covering the frustration in his. Oh, she knew she had it coming, but she didn't feel like discussing this with him with only two weeks to go before she left.

"Listen Simon," Elizabeth began, although her apology was futile. "I was going to tell you about South America, but the time never seemed right..."

"...the time has never been right for a lot of things, Elizabeth." Simon argued, his anger becoming palatable through the phone. "I mean how many times have we pushed back our wedding? Five?"

"Four…." Elizabeth corrected with a wince as she rubbed the bridge of her nose in a vain attempt to stem the growing headache. "But Simon, you know that Australia and Taiwan and India and New Zealand were all important missions and-"

"…and the wolves?" he was near to explode. He would never get over that one. Sadly that was the field study she was most proud of.

"The wolves were something special." Elizabeth stated firmly. "A chance to-"

"And what about-" he was ready to start an argument, but she decided to end it.

"Simon," Elizabeth interrupted, her patience wearing thin. "It's my job to-"

"But what about your job _to me_?" Simon asked furiously. She hated the way he spoke about this, but nevertheless he always used the same formulation – 'your job to me.' "You agreed to be my _wife_, yet you seem more concerned with saving animals then you do our relationship."

"Simon," she gritted her teeth. "You know that I love you-"

"And I love you," Simon interrupted, but it didn't really come out right. It sounded a lot more like 'I would love you more if you quit that silly job of yours'. "This is why I am asking you not to go to South America."

She closed her eyes, failing to understand how a request can like that be a declaration of love. Somebody would call it blackmail, but she decided not to go there.

"Simon, you know that I can't turn down a job like this. "

"You did once before; he pointed out, thinking back to the time that he had been hurt.

"You were in a serious _motorcycle accident_, Simon," Elizabeth elaborated, thinking back to that day when she had been in the forests of China tracking down Giant Panda's when she had gotten the call saying that Simon, her boyfriend at the time had been seriously hurt. "Of course I was going to turn down a job to be with you-"

"So be with me now…" Simon switched so fast from demanding to pleading, his voice sounding desperate over the phone, and there was something about his ability to do that, that Elizabeth didn't like at all.

"Not right now Simon," Elizabeth stated firmly looking at her watch, realizing that she was going to be late for her meeting. "I have a me- class to get too, I need to go."

"You're going to meet the members of your new precious team, aren't you?" Simon asked, seeing right through the lie, and changing right back to his previous tone. "Again, no time for us."

"Yes Simon," Elizabeth confessed with a sigh, frustrated to the point of screaming. "I am going to meet two of the members of my team-

"You really are a piece of work." Simon muttered, causing Elizabeth to be taken aback for a moment.

"I'll talk to you when I get home alright?" Elizabeth stated after a brief uncomfortable moment of silence.

"I don't plan to spend the evening at the house," Simon stated coldly. "So you should probably stay at your University apartment, and..."

"Fine." Elizabeth muttered angrily and cut him off before hanging up with Simon without even a' Goodbye' or 'Love you'. She stared at the books on the edge of her desk and shook her head. This was getting old.

"Trouble with dear Simon?" Asked a familiar and mildly sarcastic voice from the doorway and Elizabeth looked up to see her long time friend Dr. Daniel Jackson. He was an archeologist from University of Colorado who was a frequent guest teacher over here, and often he joined GARA's missions if they stumbled across some interesting ruins.

"Daniel!" Elizabeth exclaimed with surprise, trying to push back all the frustration and rising from the chair to greet her friend. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I just wanted to see how you're getting along away from your precious field work." Daniel admitted with a smile, his eyes shining behind his glasses as Elizabeth hugged him. "But I hear that you'll be heading out soon."

"Yes." Elizabeth confirmed with a nod as she ushered Daniel out of her office and down the hallway. "I was actually just on my way to meet the members of my new team, and... that was not the question. I asked what you are doing here." She slapped him on the sleeve of his jacket and he laughed.

"Well," Daniel gave her a knowing smile. "You sure you want to hear about my new project? Oh, I didn't think so. About your team... Some of them aren't all that new... in fact one of them you've dealt with before. Or so I heard"

"Well," Elizabeth began slowly running over her mental list of the people that she had worked with over the past several years. "I know that Colonel Marshall Sumner and his marines will be joining me, but this is the first time that I've gotten to pick the members of my team myself. I wonder-" she was cut off by a voice practically echoing through the corridor and she just had to grimace slightly at the person to whom the voice belonged to.

"Carson!" the annoying voice a familiar scientist roused her ears. "Get back here..."

"Rodney McKay" Elizabeth groaned, gesturing with a hand in Rodney's direction. "Daniel you could have warned me…"

"Now where would the fun be in that?" Daniel asked with a playful smirk. He knew full well that while Elizabeth considered Rodney to be a little brother, she often wanted to strangle him into good behaviour.

"Carson!" Rodney called walking towards Elizabeth and Daniel as well but Carson was already in the elevator going down... "I swear," Rodney began turning to Elizabeth. "That man has serious issues."

"I heard that he was never out of the country before." Daniel pointed out with a smirk as he placed his hands in his pockets. "The prospect of going to South America is kind of daunting even to me," he added, prompting a frown from loud scientist.

"Oh right. Oh how smart," Rodney scoffed, walking back inside the conference room and taking a seat, giving Daniel an ugly look. Daniel laughed. Elizabeth rolled her eyes. She had both of them in the field once. She hoped she'd never have to put up with that again.

"You '_Mr. I like to dig in the dirt perusing a science that is more of a child-hood fantasy'_ thinks that going to," he was about to start a verbal wrestling match with Daniel, and Elizabeth already had a headache.

"Rodney." Elizabeth interrupted walking towards the conference table, "That will be quite enough."

"Hey." Rodney protested as Elizabeth took her seat at the head of the table. "I'm not one of your students..."

"No." Carson agreed, stepping back into the room. "But if you're coming on this little journey like I am Rodney, then you are going to have to listen to her."

"Carson." Elizabeth welcomed fondly, offering the doctor a place at her left-hand side. "I'm glad to see that Rodney hasn't scared you away."

"Oh I'm mighty scared lass." Carson agreed as he took a seat. "But more so of the panther's and jaguars and other beasties that we'll be meeting than his hot-headed buffoon to your right."

"Hey!" Rodney exclaimed in protest as Daniel interrupted him with a laugh. Elizabeth covered her eyes with a hand, wondering if this could get any worse. Oh, she forgot about the soldiers and Colonel Sumner. This would be a great mission, she concluded.

"Well Elizabeth, looks like you have your hands full here." Daniel pointed out with a laugh. "I'll leave you too it then...," he turned on his heel and walked away, smirking.

"Goodbye Daniel!" Elizabeth called after him. Okay, one less kid to deal with, she thought.

"Now," Elizabeth interrupted causing both Rodney and Carson to look at her expectantly. "What the three of us need to do is to decide who else we're going to have for this mission. And we have to do it soon; I have a lecture in three hours."

"Well," Rodney began with a smirk. "I had some ideas about that…"


	2. Meetings

A/N: she here comes our new chapter in this AU Atlantis story. We'll be meeting a new person here. Tell us what you think of our joined work!

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**Chapter2: Meetings**

He was told that she is, actually, a fine piece of work. He heard of her before, of course; everybody who worked for GARA heard of her. She was the "wolf lady", the one who spent a whole year in the middle of nothing sharing the territory with a pack of wild wolves. It was a ground breaking research that yielded many important evidences and insights in wolf behavior. Even a pilot like himself understood this. He also understood the importance of the opportunity that was smiling in his face. Hank Landry told him to go and listen to her just once; at least once, before he says no and sticks his head beneath the sand again.

"Is that what you think I've been doing last two years?" asked John two days ago.

"Well, son, you can call it piloting, or making mashed potatoes in some god forsaken drive inn in Texas, but the point stays the same," answered Landry and told him where he could go and pick up his plane ticket. "They need a good pilot, and that's what you are," added Landry and walked away.

It was certainly useful to know he was still good at something and he would remember few things about that day. First, was that it was his first visit to the University of Georgia and he had nearly gotten lost. Two giggling girls showed him the way and he had to go find the lecture hall. The once beautiful skies had opened up, catching many students unaware. The rain was coming down so heavily that it seemed as though the sky itself was about to fall down. And to make matters worse, he was drenched and cold.

The big classroom he finally found was packed with students and he grinned to himself realizing that Doctor Weir's popularity stretched beyond GARA. He studied carefree young faces around him; and the students pretty much ignored him as he took one of the back seats in the big room.

The moment when she entered the classroom everybody inside fell silent, creating the effect suited for a decent suspense packed film. The conversations ceased and the elegant professor had the undivided attention of her students. That fact alone spoke of her very loudly even before she started talking herself.

John was about to discover how good she could talk.

But before she begun her lecture, he had a moment to study her appearance. Although she was dressed very elegantly, in a knee long skirt and a white blouse, with lovely chestnut curls surrounding her face and her shoulders, there was something daring and maybe even restless about her; like she didn't really fit in here, among the dusted books and sterile academic discussions. And there was something else written on her face, as though she had just come from a tussle, and had won- but that it had drained her slightly.

When she started to talk she had John's undivided attention too.

The way she talked reminded him of that officer who always made him run few more circles around the training ground; the man who said you could always do better. The words she used were suited for a poet and the said mixture surprised him. It was so long ago when he listened to a lecture with equal interest.

The pieces of her lecture stuck into his mind.

"My dear ladies and gentlemen, you are the best and the brightest for this profession. You would not be here otherwise. Now, seeing as you're the best and brightest I have a challenge for you. Exams are upon us and while I'm sure you'll pass this course easily, it is what will happen next that is up for you to decide. Will you engage in field work and let it consume you? If that's your plan, then I have few more things to tell you…"

She went on for a while, describing the hazards of field work and although John found the technical stuff rather boring, he couldn't stop listening.

"… and you have to remember it's not that romantic like you imagine it to bee. It's about as romantic as washing properly once in three weeks, freezing while waiting for some animal to appear, or wearing uncomfortable boots in heat that hell itself wouldn't be ashamed of….

….It's about accepting your own shortcomings and insecurity you feel when you look at the rainstorm that looks like it won't stop ever again. If you think that nature is something that can be put within a neat little frame you'll place on the wall of your living room, then forget it. The nature is big, it's scary and cruel. And it's beautiful too, but it can claim your life if you don't follow certain rules. It can't be ruled and it can't be tamed for our own little purposes. If you are scared, then you may stand a chance; for fear yields respect and that is the only way you can adapt and survive out there…

… and if you really want to do this, there is one thing above all that you must learn to respect. Wilderness is sacred. It can't be meddled with. What was born to be wild will die to stay that way. You can never tame something that was born to be wild and free." Elizabeth paused to look around the lecture hall, her eyes resting on everyone, lingering for a moment on a disheveled wet man in the back and her face broke into a wide grin. "Now, can anyone tell me what we were talking about last week?"

About a dozen hands went up and Elizabeth began to call on the students, each one of them answering her questions before she launched into to a lecture on the society of animals.

After three hours, the students rose and left the room slowly. Many of them took the chance with the lecture being over to ask their professor some last minute questions and John observed her easy manner of talking to the young people who listened to her answers with interest. It was then that he decided that it was definitely time to sneak off.

He was halfway down the hall when that crisp voice of Doctor Weir stopped him in his tracks.

"John Sheppard, I presume?" called the voice and the adjoining footsteps caught up with him easily. That woman could walk like a soldier in high heels. He turned towards her, taking off the big sunglasses once more.

He was slightly taller than her, but she overcame that little difference by looking him straight in the eye in the manner of an experienced pilot who studied a new airplane. The directness of her gaze erased the smirk off his face.

"That's right," he said accepting her hand. She shook his hand firmly. "What gave me away? The glasses or the hair?"

"The hair. And Hank Landry," She replied with a pleasant smile. "So, you are the pilot I requested," She stated. It wasn't a question and John thought, not for the first time today, that saying "no" and sticking his head back beneath the sand wouldn't be that easy this time. He could imagine Hank Landry smirking.

"Are you sure about your choice of staff?" he asked, finding his trademark grin again. She studied him for a long moment, with unwavering look, and he realized this woman didn't buy excuses of any kind. She folded her arms in front of her and matched his grin.

"Well, I didn't expect to hear from you until tomorrow."

"That was the official schedule, yes," he said awaiting her response.

"Well then, let's keep it by the book. I'd take a soldier would find that only suitable."

"Ex soldier," he replied, and she only arched an amused eyebrow.

"I thought you were retired?"

'And she reads the personal files and apparently asks lot of questions too.' He mused with a grin. "That's a nice way to get your butt kicked," He answered nonchalantly. She nodded and her intense eyes finally softened a bit. He was off the hook for now.

"I'd like you to contact me tomorrow ant tell me what is your decision," she said and once again offered her hand, taking his a bit more gently this time. He managed a small polite smile and watched her walk away. "I'm glad you liked my lecture," she added loudly while heading down the hall.

He pushed his hands into pockets, realizing suddenly that his feet were still wet and cold.

* * *

"Tell me you didn't Elizabeth," Called the well known voice in the doorframe of her office, causing Elizabeth to look up.

"Hello Marshall," She greeted the man in uniform. "Come on in and leave the door open. I heard you'll be joining us again?"

"Well, I can't help it when you seem to choose only the parts of the world where there are security issues."

She turned towards him smiling. "I can see your sense of humor is improving."

"I'm spending too much time with you tree hugging people," He shot back and smiled.

She grinned and put few big books on her table, before she took a seat and gestured to Colonel Marshall Sumner to take other chair that was on the other side of her desk. He took a seat.

"It's nice to see you too. What was that in the beginning about?"

"I just heard whom you hired as a pilot," He commented, his voice and tone expressing much displeasure.

"I read the file, Marshall," She stated, taking the cup of steaming-green tea into her hands and leaning back into her chair.

"The GARA file, I presume'"

"It's sufficient," She said looking over his uniform and the ranking designation on the left side of his chest. Soldiers, she mused. Although Sumner served now within UN forces, he used all of his USAF and marine connections to ask about new GARA staff.

"He is trouble," Stated Marshall as though his statement was a fact.

"I know." Elizabeth agreed with a grin as she took a sip of the warm tea. "I've spoken with him."

"You really are one piece of work, Doctor Weir," He muttered with an amused expression. He knew her for few years, worked on field with her a couple of times and got to know how stubborn she was capable to be.

"So I've been told few times," She answered somewhat bitterly, thinking back to her conversation with Simon just a few hours before.

"I take I can't make you change your mind about this issue."

"No. This is my team and my decision. I wanted an experienced pilot and Sheppard meets all the requirements of the mission. I can't have Rodney McKay pilot anything ever again."

Marshall had to laugh quietly. That event was the ongoing joke. He nodded, his face turning serious.

"I'm happy for you." Marshall stated honestly. "I know how long you waited for a field assignment, and this time it seems you got yourself a perfect team. And a rebel."

"Well, we can't do without a rebel, can't we?" she said with a smile, and Marshall got up to leave; shaking her hand before he took his way towards the parking lot of the University. If anybody could keep a rebel in order Doctor Weir probably was the person for the task. And after all, she was a rebel herself.

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A/N: we'll do our best to post the next chapter soon, and we hope you'll be interested in the story! Stay tuned and please review!! 


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